The Juice Box

Framing the cover

Once Mike got to thinking about taking Electro-Willys on the AC'12 Alaska Highway Convoy, he realized that the 60-mile range just wasn't going to cut it. The requirement for E-W was to travel up to 300 miles per day. How does one keep batteries charged to go that far?

Mike's brain got to grinding, and after much research on the Internet, he came up with a generator trailer. This would keep E-W as an all-electric vehicle while providing a mobile power source.

Installing
the generator

An M100 trailer that had been sitting in the pasture for a couple of years became the base. Brother-in-law Don helped design and weld the cover, with side access and rear doors. Once completed, the whole unit was painted OD Green on the outside and white on the inside.

Next, Mike and Steve installed the major components. In the front is an air compressor for airing up tires and such. In the middle is the custom made gas generator made by Central Maine Diesel. In the rear is the 30 gallon fuel drum for the generator.

The charger

Sitting on a shelf in the front is the key to the whole charging system. A 10 kilowatt charger by Electric Motor Werks takes the 240 VAC energy created by the generator and converts it to 150 VDC for feeding into the Electro-Willys battery pack.

Switches and Gauges

Juice Box graphic

While this system does run on gasoline, Mike estimates that it gets about 20 mpg. To manage the whole system, Mike built a control panel with switches and gauges.

When trying to come up with a name for the generator trailer, Mike was asking Steve for ideas. Steve says, "... so like Juice Box?" and the name stuck.

- Ellen